Excerpts from The Traveling Salesmen Project Blog.
El Paso, Texas
Dateline Feburary 6th, 2007 EL PASO, Texas.
Mykul and I have been looking forward to our trip to El Paso, primarily to visit Juarez. A few on our team tell us not to go, because Juarez has the highest murder rate of all border towns. We scoff at their pedestrianess.
El Paso is warm and brown which is appropriate since this is part of the Great American desert. Grass is at a premium which I like, because the city planners weren’t obsessed with grass like in Phoenix. It is arid and beautiful.
The seminar doesn’t run too long so we were able to leave early; early being around 8pm. We initially plan to go to Juarez the following day and go to the college part of downtown. We look at a map and realize that we can’t walk so we find the nearest bus stop and wait. The bus is mostly empty and the last run for Raul who is a 50 something Mexican-American.
Mykul starts talking to him and finds out the college bar area is all the way across town. Mykul, being so close to Mexico can’t pass up the opportunity so we ask Raul how to get there. It is a short walk from his last stop. While Mykul is finding out about Raul’s family and his connection with El Paso, I am staring out the window watching the neighborhoods pass by. In El Paso, the closer you get to the border the poorer it gets and the more Mexican. We drive by a church sign that tells us, ” Jesus can make everything new, even you.” I like these catchy evangelist poets and their self-publishing. We come up on a police impound lot and I can see a blood red lighted cross that seem to be floating in the sky, probably the now iconic downtown missions, with JESUS SAVES electrically emblazoned with red or white or blue neon prayers. Now driving past the police station, I notice two smashed police cruisers in the parking lot, its poorly lit, the cruisers are close to totaled. I wonder if the cops can’t drive or can’t be seen because of some new stealth technology. We get off at the last stop and say goodbye to Raul. So far, everyone in El Paso has been helpful and warm. The bus stops at the famous San Jacinto Plaza.
The San Jacinto Plaza was completed in 1883. J. Fisher Satterwaite, El Paso Parks and Streets Commissioner, can be credited for the transformation of the Plaza from a desolate piece of property to a public square. He had trees planted, fountains built and alligators placed in the pond.
One story claims that the alligators were sent to a local miner from a friend in Louisiana as a joke. The miner then presented the alligators to Mayor C. R. Morehead, who had them placed in the park pond
The alligators were an attraction until they were finally moved to the El Paso Zoo in 1965 after two were stoned to death and another had a spike driven through its left eye. The alligators were returned to the plaza in 1972 for two years only to be removed once more because of vandals. Now a statue stands commemorating them.
For More: The Alligators of El Paso
The plaza is empty and the bars are closing down and it was barely 9PM. And people call SLC a backwater, please. We have a few drinks and start the walk to the border about three blocks away.
The main artery to Juarez looks like Juarez; all the signs in Spanish, and Mexican pop culture images everywhere. The streets are mostly deserted and a little dark. Just before the border there is graffiti painted on the wall, a large white box with a blue cross in the middle, below it in Spanish is written,
Dedicado a todas las mujeres y ninos victimas de la violencia el abuso y extradicion.
We walk up to the beginning of bridge that leads into Mexico. You can tell you are close, even before you are there because of the appearance Concertina Wire, double circles of razor wire that are stretched out like a Concertina – an accordion like instrument. There is something wrong calling the razor, flesh tearing machines after a musical instrument that is famous for polka music. Listen to this file and imagine a poor Mexican illegal getting caught in it.
Fellni would appreciate the irony.
We enter Mexico for 35 cents. We now can see into Mexico and on the side of the river retaining wall is graffiti of all kinds, mostly anti-American. It is the poor and disenfranchised version of the middle finger to the rich gringos in the North.
Walking into Mexico, like every Mexican border town, we are assaulted with, ” Taxi? Taxi? Girl? Young Girl?” We tell them no thank you and walk. We notice the first bar in Mexico but don’t stop, deciding to make it the last bar in Mexico as we leave.
We wander down the main street for a while, even here most things are closed, but at least there are people on the street. Mykul wants to get off the main street and we walk over to the next one. We walk a block or two and turn a corner and there in front of us is the bull fight ring. We both sigh. Brutal in its violence, lovely in its divine drama – the beauty in the bulls futile but courageous attempt to live! A stacked deck against it… but it fights to the end, closer to real life than any reality show.
Tonight it is empty and dark but we can still hear the cheering crowds and the smell of blood and roses.
Walking back to the main street, we pass a few local prostitutes. These are hall of famers, once beautiful woman, once a little baby in a mother’s arms looking over the garden, now old and hollow, offering themselves for $25. We walk past as they throw desperate kisses our way. We see their pimps on the corner, Mykul notices that they are barely 18 years old. We pass them and they are polite with smiles of death. Here are the children of Juarez, selling grandmothers for food and a new pair of boots. The economics of desperation and being so close to abundance of America, that mocks them everyday.
We are hungry and need some tequila so we stop at a restaurant. The waiter is gracious and warm and brings us two shots, then two more. I notice on the menu, that they have baby goats head. I am not a big meat eater but I eat meat. I decide that I am going to order it to defamiliarized myself from the sterilized, mass produce meat that I eat at home, to see the death of eating an animal.
The head comes, it is a fleshy skull of a baby goat. I eat meat, so I embrace it. The taste is good, though the meat is sparse. I want to taste the tongue. I take my knife and fork, hold the tongue back at the base and cut. Part of me is creeped out, not by the thought of eating a goats tongue, it’s meat, but the removing it from the goats mouth to eat it is so foreign. At this table in Juarez, there is nothing that separates me from the fact that I am eating from a goat’s head. I am surprised to find the tongue is the best tasting part.
The locals love the baby goat head not so much for the meat, but the brain and the eyes. The brain is a local favorite and the skull is cracked open so that the diner can access the brains. I don’t know if I can eat it, until Mykul takes the fork and puts some in his mouth. ” It tastes like liver.” I take a bite, “You’re right.” We agree that we don’t appreciate liver and therefore, not goat’s brain either. I cannot bring myself to eat the eyes, Mykul being more gastronomically daring having lived in Korea for years, takes a bite, and his face changes to and unpleasant expression of ” What is in my mouth!” He quickly washes it down with a margarita. ” Yea, the eyeball not so much.”
I talk to the waiter in my broken Spanish and find out that he has three children, 14, 11 and 4. He has been working 13 hours, His face is warm and open and kind. We are the last diners and tell him we are leaving so he can go and be home with his family. He smiles a big smile and says, “Gracias,” We walk out 4 shots and two giant margaritas happier.
We wander back to the border and we see across the street a bar opening that looks like a cave opening with a sheet as a door. The light from the bar is red and entices us. We step down the steps into El Grupo an artificial cavern of stalagmites, grime and smoke. Performing is Kevin, the King of 80’s pop an expat who looks more like an American woodshop teacher than the King of the 80’s. Kevin and the bartender are the only ones in the bar. Mykul and I want to transplant the bar with Kevin and the barkeep to SLC and make a mint. We start walking out and Kevin asks where we are going. Kevin wants to play for someone beside Juan.
We are starting to really feel the Tequila but decide to stop at the last bar in Juarez. We walk in and there is a young man sitting at the bar and a 60 something bartender cleaning up. The bar is closing down. We start talking to the young man and we tell him that we are poets. We start talking about Latin American poets and North American poets, this interests the bartender. He asks me who are my favorite Latin poets and I tell him it is Neruda, Vallejo and Hiudobro. He tells us that Neruda is to obvious at times and not as sublime as Borges, Borges is the best poet in the world. The bartender is very articulate and we continue talking. Octavio, the young man, also is articulate and together we talk for almost an hour. We learn about a Mexican poet that they loved, Alfonso Reyes,
“Mexico is at once a world of mystery and clarity: in her landscape, mystery in the souls of he people.”
and
“I was another, being myself;
I was he who wanted to leave.
To return is to cry. I do not repent of this wide world.
It is not I who return,
But my shackled feet.”
And we learned of a revisionist Spanish arabist, Miguel Asin Palaces who hypothesis that Dante used the writings of Ibn al-Arabi to compose The Divine Comedy
We finish our beers while the bartender finishes cleaning up. We say good night and left the last bar in Juarez, a town known for its murder rate, intellectually feed.
It is true that Mexico is a mystery and so are her people; passionate, loving, magical, desperate and violent.
In other words, alive.
